New revelations aired this week on a Colorado radio station threaten to deepen a scandal that has for weeks dogged CNN, after the cable news station aired and then defended a mistranslation that had Iranian president Hassan Rouhani condemning the “Holocaust” in an interview with Christiane Amanpour.
The remarks were widely reported and broadly described – by top American and British outlets, by wire services, and by Amanpour herself – as a signal of Iranian moderation. CNN’s teaser of the interview was titled “Iran’s new president: Yes, the Holocaust happened.”
The translation, which was provided by CNN both in live voiceover and in a published transcript, was inaccurate. In an interview on radio show Tell Me More, Rouhani’s translator describes how she told as much to CNN. The station’s response was – according to Banafsheh Keynoush – “You know, stuff happens. It’s OK.”:
MARTIN: Now, you know about this. The Iranian press subsequently challenged your use of the word Holocaust in your translation. What do you make of this? What do you say about that?
KEYNOUSH: Well, that is correct. And he did not use the word Holocaust. So, I can just tell you what transpired as a result – I went to his people and also spoke with CNN and said, you know, this is what has happened and I take full responsibility for it. And you’d be interested to know…
MARTIN: What word did he use?
KEYNOUSH: He said, I think, that event. He referred to it as that historic event or something of the sort. And you’d be interested to know that in the end they said, you know, stuff happens. It’s OK. And, you know, obviously I trust CNN. And I know that they really handled the situation the way it had to be handled.
Iran’s state-controlled Fars news agency quickly published a correct transcript and translation. Fars specifically cited two “fabricated” quotes – Rouhani’s alleged “Holocaust” condemnation and a line in which the president purportedly declared “whatever criminality [the Nazis] committed against the Jews, we condemn” – as ones that “totally change what President Rouhani has said.” Iranian officials have since floated actually banning CNN for implying that the country’s president would condemn the “Holocaust.”
The Fars transcript and translation were independently confirmed by the Wall Street Journal. Rouhani’s office subsequently published a Persian-language transcript of the interview that also lacked those passages.
CNN and Amanpour, for their parts, defended the mistranslation. CNN published a transcript of the interview that included the criticized passages. Ananpour took to Twitter to accuse the Wall Street Journal of having “jump[ed] into bed with [an] Iranian extremist mouthpiece like Fars.” And in between, the CNN host went on Anderson Cooper 360 to ridicule and dismiss critics.
As evidence, Amanpour cited her own ability to speak Persian as well as the word of Rouhani’s translator:
AMANPOUR: Well, you know, piffle, ridiculous –
COOPER: Piffle?
AMANPOUR: Yeah – I mean I’m not even going to dignify that with a comment. But what I can say is that we put the entire transcript out online, we’ve got the entire 56 minute interview if anybody at Fars cares to read it – we have his translator, I speak Persian, I know what he said, um it’s ridiculous. But it does actually show, and frankly this happens all the time, and by the way, Fars is always busy making up complete fabrications about what other world leaders say…
The video of Amanpour’s Andersoon Cooper appearance is embedded below. It is not known if Rouhani’s translator had informed CNN of the mistranslation before Amanpour’s statement.
The Wall Street Journal has published that it would be “happy to accept” an apology from CNN.